Five Lessons Charles Taught and One Erik Explained
by schweinsty
Summary: Does what it says on the tin. Post-movie AU. Charles is disabled and proud.
1. Lesson I

**Five Lessons Charles Taught Someone, and One Lesson Erik Took Pains to Explain**

_Lesson One: Strength and Physical Ability Are Not Directly Proportional Quantities_

Lieutenant William Stryker crouched in the bushes outside of Charles Xavier's mansion and waited.

_Something's not right,_ he thought. _There should have been warnings. An alarm. Even if Xavier was alone, surely they had some sort of defensive system. Especially if Xavier was alone._

Well, no matter. Maybe the mutant felt safe enough in his mansion, secluded as it was, protected by a government that only cared about scandal. Either way, Charles Xavier hadn't been seen with his X-Men in well over a year, and there was little doubt he acted as anything more than a figurehead for his band of freaks. And with all the others out on missions, it should not be too difficult to take down a man in a wheelchair and a few frightened children, telepath or not.

The order to move in came soon enough, and William sat up and peered in through the window he was ducking beneath. Looked like he found the kitchen. There was a night-light next to the sink, but no one was inside. Carefully, he took out his tools and got to work. He'd just managed to unlatch the window when he heard a tinkling of glass from the other side of the mansion. He held his breath for a moment, but no lights came on, no warning yells sounded out, and after a minute he took up his M16 and crept towards the second floor, where, according to their intel, the children would be sleeping.

It was strange, though; although the captain had said the thermal scans showed seventeen life signs in the house, seemingly asleep, all the bedrooms William came across were empty. There were toys and pictures and clothes strewn about, and beds with rumpled covers that looked like someone had just gotten up, but no children- even though he had been _sure_he'd heard someone breathing in one of them. Odder still, though he'd been in the house a good ten minutes, searching the bedrooms for any signs of life, William had not run into a single one of his fellow soldiers. He even tried calling out a few times, quietly, but no one answered.

It was eerie, and William started getting a very bad feeling somewhere in the pit of his stomach.

The feeling only intensified when he ducked out of a bedroom into a hallway and found himself facing a young man in a wheelchair.

"Hello," said Charles Xavier.

William brought his rifle up aimed, but just before he fired it, he realized he didn't really want to shoot anything, least of all an unarmed human, and he found himself taking apart the rifle and setting the pieces down on the floor gently; too much noise would wake the children.

"Good boy," Xavier said, smiling. He was a rather slight man, not very threatening, with a mop of floppy black hair that looked immaculate. His hands were resting lightly on the wheels of his chair, but William didn't miss the way his fingers gripped the rims.

_He's got the upper hand now, but if I can just distract him long enough to-_

"Oh, I really wouldn't try that." Xavier was still smiling, but there was something behind it, something made of steel and iron and raw, unyielding force that stopped William in his tracks. "All the other men you came with are sleeping peacefully – much as I would be if you hadn't interrupted. The only reason you're still awake is because I know your father and I have no doubts he's the one behind your little… expedition."

William tried to speak, but he found suddenly that his mouth wouldn't open.

"Now, then, here's what's going to happen," Xavier continued, and William found himself lost in that voice, which seemed to lecture and calm at the same time, and everything it said was right...

William blinked, and found himself in the kitchen again. He was standing in front of the open window, just as he'd come in, and the night light by the sink was still on. For a fleeting moment, William wondered if he had hallucinated a half hour, but just before he noticed that his rifle was missing, a feeling of lightness crept into his head, and he thought what a good idea it would be to drag the soldiers outside, into the truck they'd come in, drive back to Washington, and destroy all information regarding the location of Charles Xavier's school.

It was a very different lieutenant who faced his father when he got back to D.C.

The next morning, Lieutenant William Stryker and his captain reported to William Stryker, Sr., and the director of the CIA. It was a long debriefing, though fruitless. Neither William nor Captain Simms, like the rest of the men, remembered anything after leaving for their mission, and the only hint that they had found Xavier was a note, pinned to William's pocket, in William's own handwriting.

_You waited until Erik and the others were absent to attack,_ it said. _Please do not think your soldiers' lives mean that I am weak; threaten the children again, and Erik Lensherr will be the least of your worries._

William, naturally, had no memory of writing it.


	2. Lesson II

_Lesson__ Two:__ There __also__ appears __to__ be __no__ correlation__ between__ ability__ to__ parent__ and__ ability __to__ move __one__'__s__ legs._

"Alex?" Charles leaned his head against the door and tried to calm the flutter of worry in his stomach. He could hear Alex moving in his bedroom, rustling papers and bedclothes, and he could feel the anxiety and fear that had been bleeding off the kid for the last two days, but nothing more definite. "Alex, I will not read your mind, but if there's something wrong, you really should talk to me or Erik. We can help you, Alex. You're not alone."

The rustling inside stopped, and the fear and anxiety in the room spiked.

"I'm fine, I just want to be alone!"

Alex settled into silence then, and Charles groaned and leaned back in his chair. "I don't suppose he just wants to study for his entrance exams."

"You're the telepath." Erik smirked when Charles turned to look at him, arms crossed unhelpfully across his chest. "Charles, this is ridiculous. We can just-"

"You are not unlocking his door without his permission. We _promised._"

Erik made a grumbling sort of 'hmm' in the back of his throat, and the doorknob wiggled back and forth a little in front of Charles but didn't unlock. Charles felt rather than heard someone whisper something around the hall corner (where the other children had thought they were hiding successfully – and, really, he had to remember to stop thinking of them as children before he called them that out loud. They really wouldn't like that).

Charles yanked himself back to the present before his thoughts could wander too far and focused on the task at hand. Adamant as he was about not breaking his promises to the children – especially Alex, who was least used of all to interacting with others on a regular basis – Erik was right; this was getting ridiculous, not to mention dangerous. If Alex had been attacked, or if his powers had mutated…

"Alex, we just want to help. You know we-"

"I said I'm fine!" Alex's voice sounded strained; hoarse. Charles exchanged a worried glance with Erik, and he was about to knock on the door again when there was a shuffling sound from inside the room, followed by a thump and a low moan.

Charles hadn't even opened his mouth before the lock sprung open, crumpled into a misshapen ball, and fell to the floor along with the hinges, which left clumps of splinters in their wake.

The door fell inside the room, and Erik squeezed around the wheelchair before Charles' eyes adjusted to the darkness inside the room. It took him a moment to make out Erik kneeling over Alex, who lay, feebly protesting, on the floor by the bed.

"He's burning up," Erik muttered over Alex's protests of 'Please, go away, I'm fine'. Charles pushed his wheelchair forward-

-and stopped, stuck, as his chair ran into the doorframe and didn't move past.

_Goddamnit._

Charles quelled the sudden spark of anger. He'd been the one who'd said that fixing the east wing could wait, after all. Just one of those things.

"-get Hank to have a look at him; his skin feels abnormally-"

"Erik."

Erik frowned at hearing Charles still so far away, and he looked up puzzled, but his look quickly cleared, and with one crook of his finger, Charles' chair jolted and _moved_, slicing through the wooden frame like butter.

Charles dug his fingernails into his palms and didn't think of how he couldn't get through a _doorway_ without help. Instead, he wheeled himself towards the bed, ignoring the gym clothes strewn across the floor.

"Alex?"

Erik had managed to get Alex back up onto the bed, somehow, but little else; Alex had immediately scrambled back against the headboard, head tucked against his knees and a pillow held in front of him defensively, muttering ceaselessly under his breath. Even from several feet away, Charles could see how Alex's skin was flushed and his shirt was damp with sweat.

"Hey," Charles said. He moved as close to the bed as he could and reached out, but Alex shied away from his touch. "It's okay," Charles muttered, and, motioning Erik to stay back, he raised his fingers to his head and projected as much of a sense of calm as he could muster.

"Alex?" he said again, and this time when he reached down Alex didn't flinch away, and Charles managed to lay his hand on the kid's shoulder.

"Dear God, you're burning up."

_Hank_, he called out to the scientist, who'd come up with the others into the hall. _Go__ get __the __first __aid __kit __from__ the __basement__ – __the__ one __in__ the__ green __bag__ – __and__ come__ back__ up,__ but__ wait__ outside__ until__ I__ tell__ you._

"Did you get infected with something?"

Charles had forgotten that Erik was still there until Erik spoke, but he let Erik take over questioning Alex and focused on Alex's mind. He didn't need to read the kid's mind to tell that he was just this side of delirium, and barely. He wasn't going to 'go in' without permission, but just being close enough to touch – it was like sitting next to someone and trying not to overhear their conversation.

_need__ sleep__ can__'__t__ let__ them__ near__ me__ have__ to__ get __away__ can__'__t__ hurt__ them__ to__ the__ bunker__ please__ don__'__t__ want__ to __hurt__ them__ can__'__t-_

"Alex? Alex, it's all right, I won't let you hurt anyone, but you have to let me help, yes?" Charles didn't realize how far he was leaning towards the bed, both his hands on Alex now, until he felt Erik's gently restraining grip on his shoulder. "I'm just going to sort through your mind a bit to calm things down, all right? I won't look at anything else."

Alex nodded, though he didn't lift his head, and Charles poked just a little bit deeper in his head, soothing, calming, smoothing the edges of panic and fear and quieting the litany of _please__ don__'__t__ leave__ me__ go__ need__ to__ be__ alone__ can__'__t__ hurt__ anyone__ please_ just enough to regain some sense of lucidity.

"Is this normal?" It was Erik, of course, who asked; Erik, who seemed so distant and aloof at times, but who was always the first to check that the children were all right, always keeping an eye out for them in a fight, ready to swoop in and rescue them. "Has this happened before, or is this new? Did someone attack you – poison, perhaps?"

"No," Charles found himself saying at the same time as Alex as the words bubbled to the surface of the kid's mind. Alex hid his head in his arms and let Charles answer for him. "It's like the flu, but worse, and – oh, Alex."

"What?" Erik's voice was low, but Charles, even distracted as he was, couldn't miss the note of worry in it.

"It's – difficult," Charles said, sifting through his – no, Alex's – memories popped into the forefront of his – their – mind; running to the woods to hide, huddling in the abandoned building and hoping no one else wandered in, lying in isolation at the prison and not knowing if the walls were thick enough. Terror remembering what could happen if they weren't. "Controlling it - his powers. The fever – it's easy to lose control – but – I can stop it, I think."

Alex looked up at that, disbelieving. His eyes glowed red, and his thoughts knotted up and _pulsed_ with panic as he remembered, but Charles made a soothing sound and leaned in, sifting through his mind, both hands on either side of Alex's head now, and looked until – aha. There it was, sitting in a corner of Alex's mind; a little lump of – red-hot panic, would be the best way to describe it, all ragged and raw and pin-prick pressure sensitive.

"It's okay," Charles said, and he found all the calm and peace in Alex's being and focused them, focused and focused until Alex's trembling stopped altogether and he slumped against Charles' shoulder, asleep for the first time in two days.

Charles didn't realize that he hadn't let go until Erik grabbed Alex by the shoulders and eased him down onto the bed.

"I should stay with him," Charles said, and he definitely did not smile as Erik tucked the nineteen-year-old in and ran a hand over his forehead. Charles waited until Alex was settled before moving his chair and leveraging himself onto the bed next to him. Erik made as if to step forward but stopped, stock-still, and went out to the hall to call Hank instead, and Charles felt a strange bit of warmth spread through him for that.

Hank's examination didn't last long – really, he took Alex's temperature, gave him a shot, and took several vials of blood – _kinky_, Charles heard Erik think, and almost laughed – and disappeared again with a promise to come back as soon as he found anything.

Charles waited until he and Erik were alone again before he drew Alex's head against him, cradling his head with his hands, and checked on Alex's mind again. Nothing; Alex wasn't even dreaming, and the fever didn't seem to be compromising his powers for the moment.

"You don't have to stay," he said as Erik pulled a chair up next to the bedside and sat down with a magazine.

Erik simply gave him a _look _and flipped the magazine open. "Don't be ridiculous," he said, gruffly.

Charles leaned his head back against the headboard and shut his eyes, mind still connected with Alex's, and if he noticed when Erik pulled a blanket over him, he didn't say anything, but he spared one thought before falling asleep that the children wouldn't come in for a while.

Alex was never going to live this one down.


End file.
